Winter blues and the hope of Spring.

I have really struggled with winter this year.

I'm not sure if it gets harder to deal with the older I get, or it's a build up of many things, but January seemed to go on forever!

The low light levels, dark at 5pm, grey skies and drizzle, interspersed with hard frost and wind.

My mental health definitely suffered this winter.

I've been unmotivated, anxious and distinctly lacking in oomph.

Insomnia is my nemesis.

Insomnia that seemed to ramp in those dark nights, while nocturnal Lily-the-cat was wandering around outside, oblivious/deliberately ignoring me calling her, whilst I also wandered around outside, dressed in pyjamas and a big hat and setting off various light sensors as I searched for her in the village!

2022 was a tricky year for selling, and the cost of living was - and still is - spiralling.

My ongoing battle with exemestane isn't helping either.

What is it with this single solitary pill that causes such awful side effects?

Each one on its own is probably not too bad, but all thrown in together is hard to deal with.

Five years on from my breast cancer diagnosis and I'm probably skipping more than I'm taking now.

 I've found the lack of support from the oncologist post treatment quite shocking really.

Impossible to get an appointment with and my lovely but unhelpful breast care nurse on the other end of the phone, just reiterating that I need to take it for a decade!

Sometimes, I wonder if tamoxifen was the lesser of three evils.

At the crux of it all is being immediately thrown into a chemical menopause with chemo and the exemestane just ramping up the side effects with a vengeance.

Perhaps male oncologists just don't appreciate the severity of menopause symptoms?

BUT, here we are, nearing the end of February.

The days are longer, the daffodils are nearly out and my windowsills have become plant nurseries.

The insomnia is still rampant, the low level anxiety ever present, but my mood has lifted.

Lily the wanderer is staying inside more at night, and the windows are firmly closed.

Sometimes, it's the small things that can make all the difference.

I had a long overdue lightbulb moment that maybe I wasn't motivated workwise in winter because my north facing workroom barely caught the sun.

Impossible to move my large desktop computer, and there's no way around moving my sewing station, but having a new, shiny, present to me laptop in the sunny, south facing front room has made a huge difference this month!

I had originally replaced my old laptop with a desktop to do precisely what I'm not doing now - keeping work behind one door - but, for now, this is working for me.